Developing Games in Javascript
I was inspired by the Ludum Dare competition at the beginning of last month. I wanted to make a game!
Initially I started working in Python but sadly the current state of game libraries’ OS X compatibility leaves plenty for another post. I thought I’d give Javascript a whirl.
There are many, many javascript game libraries. I invented 3 criteria for choosing one in the end:
- Can I understand the code, armed with just my early-2000’s knowledge of Javascript?
- What’s the documentation like?
- How cool do the example games look?
basically, #1 and #3 are inversely proportional and #2 is really hit-and-miss.
JawsJs ended up being my choice. It totally fulfilled #1, #2 was good enough that I could work out where to go next and #3 looked pitched at the sort of level I thought I could manage myself!
I found that I really enjoyed using it. It even became my first contributed repository on GitHub - I implemented A* pathfinding on TileMaps (which I’ll probably write about soon).
My first game is still very much in progress, and it represents the absolute zenith of my artistic abilities, but I’m proud of it:
Play ‘Rouge’ here. It’ll get better.